Laurence Hugh Hughes was born in Pittsworth, Queensland, where his father was a bank manager. His grandfather was the New South Wales general manager of the Bank of Australasia when he died in 1887. However, Laurie’s ancestral pride stemmed from the fact that his great-great-grandfather was Dr Martin Mason, surgeon to the ship Buffalo, and arrived in Sydney in 1798, where he became Australia’s first private general practitioner.

Laurie was educated at the Maitland Boys’ High School and Sydney University, where he graduated in 1912 and became an RMO at the Royal North Shore Hospital and later at the Royal Hospital for Women. He then did locums in the Hunter Valley district until early 1916 when he enlisted in the AIF and was sent to New Britain, where he contracted malaria. He made a detailed study of this disease and was awarded his MD for his thesis on Observations on Malaria from Experiences in New Guinea.

After demobilisation Laurie entered general practice in Glebe where, under the influence of his senior partner, Dr Litchfield, he developed a lifetime interest in paediatrics. In 1923 he was appointed honorary assistant physician to both the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and in due course became the senior physician at both institutions. He had a special interest in rheumatic fever and was instrumental with Dr RAR Green in establishing the Smith Family Home for rheumatic children at Mount Arcadia. I recall many hair-raising drives from Prince Alfred to North Parramatta along the Parramatta Road, for Laurie had the unnerving habit of looking fixedly at his front seat passenger when addressing him. His peripheral vision must have been particularly wide! He was a foundation Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians and was elected president of the section of paediatrics at the tenth session of the Australasian Medical Congress in 1959.

If ever a man deserved the eponym ‘beloved physician’ it was Laurence Hughes. Despite a heavy work load he never appeared hurried, listened intently to what was said, was kindness personified in his dealings with patients, colleagues and students and had a quiet sense of humour. His knowledge was broad and his experience great and he used both to good advantage in his consultant and hospital practice and in his lectures on paediatrics and adult medicine, for he was the University lecturer in both subjects for ten years.

Apart from medicine, Laurence Hughes had wide cultural interests and became an authority on rose growing, English porcelain and 18th century furniture. He was also very interested in the works of Gilbert and Sullivan and early Australian history and was president of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society for several years, and an active member of the Pioneers’ Club of New South Wales.

In 1916 he married Muriel Stuart, whom he had met at the Royal North Shore Hospital, and they had a long and happy life, producing three sons, one of whom is a doctor. A source of great joy and pride to Laurie was that a grandson, Richard, also graduated in medicine so that three generations of the Hughes family were graduates of Sydney University and practising medicine simultaneously. Laurie and his wife spent their retirement in the quiet country town of Bundanoon, where he indulged his hobbies and participated in the life of the village until his death at the age of eighty-four.